38 Facts About Ovid

Ovid was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature.

Ovid is known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria and Fasti.

Ovid's poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature.

Ovid writes more about his own life than most other Roman poets.

Ovid's father wanted him to study rhetoric so that he might practice law.

Ovid was part of the circle centered on the esteemed patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and likewise seems to have been a friend of poets in the circle of Maecenas.

Ovid married three times and had divorced twice by the time he was thirty.

Ovid spent the first 25 years of his literary career primarily writing poetry in elegiac meter with erotic themes.

Ovid's writing in the Ars Amatoria concerned the serious crime of adultery.

In exile, Ovid wrote two poetry collections, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, which illustrated his sadness and desolation.

The obscure causes of Ovid's exile have given rise to endless explanations from scholars.

Ovid himself wrote many references to his offense, giving obscure or contradictory clues.

In 1923, scholar JJ Hartman proposed a theory that is little considered among scholars of Latin civilization today: that Ovid was never exiled from Rome and that all of his exile works are the result of his fertile imagination.

Ovid had written "Exitus acta probat" - the result justifies the means.

Elegy originates with Propertius and Tibullus, but Ovid is an innovator in the genre.

Poem 4 is didactic and describes principles that Ovid would develop in the Ars Amatoria.

In poem 11 Ovid decides not to love Corinna any longer and regrets the poems he has written about her.

Ovid advises men to avoid giving too many gifts, keep up their appearance, hide affairs, compliment their lovers, and ingratiate themselves with slaves to stay on their lover's good side.

The care of Venus for procreation is described as is Apollo's aid in keeping a lover; Ovid then digresses on the story of Vulcan's trap for Venus and Mars.

The book ends with Ovid asking his "students" to spread his fame.

Ovid gives women detailed instructions on appearance telling them to avoid too many adornments.

Ovid advises women to read elegiac poetry, learn to play games, sleep with people of different ages, flirt, and dissemble.

The book ends with his wish that women will follow his advice and spread his fame saying Naso magister erat, "Ovid was our teacher".

Six books in elegiacs survive of this second ambitious poem that Ovid was working on when he was exiled.

Ovid uses direct inquiry of gods and scholarly research to talk about the calendar and regularly calls himself a vates, a seer.

The Ibis is an elegiac poem in 644 lines, in which Ovid uses a dazzling array of mythic stories to curse and attack an enemy who is harming him in exile.

Ovid cites Callimachus' Ibis as his inspiration and calls all the gods to make his curse effective.

Ovid uses mythical exempla to condemn his enemy in the afterlife, cites evil prodigies that attended his birth, and then in the next 300 lines wishes that the torments of mythological characters befall his enemy.

Book 2 consists of one long poem in which Ovid defends himself and his poetry, uses precedents to justify his work, and begs the emperor for forgiveness.

The first book has ten pieces in which Ovid describes the state of his health, his hopes, memories, and yearning for Rome, and his needs in exile.

Poem 12 is addressed to a Tuticanus, whose name, Ovid complains, does not fit into meter.

The final poem is addressed to an enemy whom Ovid implores to leave him alone.

One loss, which Ovid himself described, is the first five-book edition of the Amores, from which nothing has come down to us.

Ovid is traditionally considered the final significant love elegist in the evolution of the genre and one of the most versatile in his handling of the genre's conventions.

Ovid has been seen as taking on a persona in his poetry that is far more emotionally detached from his mistress and less involved in crafting a unique emotional realism within the text than the other elegists.

Ovid has been considered a highly inventive love elegist who plays with traditional elegiac conventions and elaborates the themes of the genre; Quintilian even calls him a "sportive" elegist.

Ovid's works have been interpreted in various ways over the centuries with attitudes that depended on the social, religious and literary contexts of different times.

In Spain, Ovid is both praised and criticized by Cervantes in his Don Quixote, where he warns against satires that can exile poets, as happened to Ovid.